


Everything you ever wished for.

by emothy



Series: Rewritten [4]
Category: Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-24
Updated: 2006-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emothy/pseuds/emothy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tezuka/Fuji, set in hospital directly after Tezuka & Atobe's match. My alternate-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything you ever wished for.

-

Finally, everyone was gone from his sight. The doctor, the nurses, Ryuzaki-sensei and her worrying. Thank goodness his parents were out of town; both working, and had been unable to return to hover around him and say useless things in an attempt to be comforting. Tezuka's window was still uncovered, and the dark of the evening slipped in and went straight to his mind.

He heard the door open, though it was so slight it was obviously intended to go unnoticed. When he glanced over, he saw Fuji stood in front of the closed door, still in his club uniform after all these hours gone by, his head dipped low. Tezuka did not speak.

"I'm sorry." Fuji said, and he never whispered in a choked voice like that. Tezuka took a brief moment to wonder if he had released some tears since they'd last seen one another, and then waved it away to a hardness in his voice.

"You were the only one who knew I suspected anything about my shoulder." He said slowly and firmly.

"I told Atobe Keigo." Fuji agreed, still refusing to look up properly. "Nearly two and a half years is long enough to wait, Tezuka. Think about it."

He did think about it, as Fuji crossed the room past his bed, dropping his kit bag on the floor before he took up by the window and stood glancing out at the stars, a hand lightly brushing the ledge. He thought about two and a half years ago, when they had met, and he hadn't paid much attention, while Fuji had seen something wonderful. He thought of a month or so after that, when they had attempted to play a match. He thought of the next two years, of how his arm always seemed to hold him back, and how nobody even noticed, except for Fuji. The aches and pains, the tiny slips of hand off by mere inches that still made things turn out differently to how he wanted.

"I can still hear your scream." Fuji says, and his attempt at a small laugh comes out desperately strangled. "In my head, in time with my breathing, my heartbeat. With every step I walk. I hear it all the time." He turns from the night sky to look at Tezuka. "It shames me to tell you part of me finds enjoyment in it." He takes a few steps towards Tezuka's bed, and spreads his fingers across a supported shoulder. "Just as it shames you that a part of you enjoys feeling this."

Tezuka squeezes his eyes shut and says nothing. If he pretends the words were not said, Fuji will also, and they can think past it. Just because they both know both these things are true, it does not mean they have to be spoken aloud.

"Tezuka," Fuji begins again as though he hadn't spoken, sitting on the side of the bed and taking Tezuka's hands up in his, "I am sorrier than words can express."

"I know." Tezuka nodded and frowned, his face warping in confusion. "That's why it's hard to be mad at you."

-

"I'm sorry... But I'm not asking you for your forgiveness. Not yet." He replied. "I feel so much guilt, and yet a part of me wants to shout at you so badly." The corners of his mouth try to curl up at that admission. "If only you had put your carefulness at the top of your list. But you do not. For all the caution you raise your team up under, you do not practice it enough yourself."

"Sometimes winning means taking risks." Tezuka says, and somehow he feels he is apologising for his actions by offering some kind of explanation. Fuji does things like this to him, unintentionally.

"Not at the risk of yourself!" Fuji says harshly. "We had this discussion once before. And still you did not learn the lesson. Why do you think so little of yourself that you can so carelessly discard an entire limb?"

Tezuka cannot reply; he has never seen it as such. But never before has a match been such a risk to his arm. How would you know what you would do until the moment comes?

-

"I really didn't think, until the last possible moment, that you would really let yourself be hurt so badly." Fuji admits. "As if that is an excuse... But I thought you had realised. I thought you had learnt from last time. Obviously my point was not made clearly enough. Tennis is more important, winning is more important. And pain is more memorable, and more compelling."

"_Compelling_?"

"Isn't that the one last thing that was keeping you going?" Fuji asks almost innocently. "We all knew there was a low chance you would win. We all knew there was a substitute who could recover the score for us. If you really wanted Echizen to step up, you would have let him. But the pain made your goals and your sense disappear, no?"

-

"How is it you could know what the doctors did not?"

"Because I know you, and they don't." Fuji says simply. "They look at a chart, they see that your elbow is troubling you. They x-ray the elbow. You, too proud and stubborn to mention a niggling pain in your shoulder because it seems insignificant, say nothing more. They do not x-ray the shoulder, they do not probe further, ask questions, do tests." Fuji stops. "I watch you, I listen. I've become adept at hearing everything you do not say."

-

_If I could change your mind,  
I wouldn't save you from the path you wander.  
In desperation dreams, any soul can set you free.  
And I still hear you scream,  
in every breath, in every single motion.  
Burning innocence, the fire to set you free._

  
**\- Chrome,VNV Nation**.


End file.
